passage which may
be quoted here: "Though by nature of an athletic form, Burns had in his
constitution the peculiarities and the delicacies that belong to the
temperament of genius. He was liable, from a very early period of life, to
that interruption in the process of digestion which arises from deep and
anxious thought, and which is sometimes the effect, and sometimes the
cause, of depression of spirits."--ED.]

[Footnote B: In the Preface to the "Narcisse."]

But to our solitude. So true is it that this love of loneliness is an
early passion, that two men of genius of very opposite characters, the one
a French wit and the other a French philosopher, have acknowledged that
they have felt its influence, and even imagined that they had discovered
its cause. The Abbe DE ST. PIERRE, in his political annals, tells us, "I
remember to have heard old SEGRAIS remark, that most young people of both
sexes had at one time of their lives, generally about seventeen or
eighteen years of age, an inclination to retire from the world. He
maintained this to be a species of melancholy, and humorously called it
the small-pox of the mind, because scarce one in a thousand escaped the
attack. I myself have had this distemper, but am not much marked with it."

But if the youth of genius be apt to retire from the ordinary sports of
his mates, he will often substitute for them others, which are the
reflections of those favourite studies which are haunting his young
imagination, as men in their dreams repeat the conceptions which have
habitually interested them. The amusements of such an idler have often
been analogous to his later pursuits. ARIOSTO, while yet a schoolboy,
seems to have been very susceptible of poetry, for he composed a sort of
tragedy from the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, to be represented by his
brothers and sisters, and at this time also delighted himself in
translating the old French and Spanish romances. Sir WILLIAM JONES, at
Harrow, divided the fields according to a map of Greece, and to each
schoolfellow portioned out a dominion; and when wanting a copy of the
_Tempest_ to act from, he supplied it from his memory; we must confess
that the boy Jones was reflecting in his amusements the cast of mind he
displayed in his after-life, and evincing that felicity of memory and
taste so prevalent in his literary character. FLORIAN'S earliest years
were passed in shooting birds all day, and reading every evening an old
translati